POV Call Sign: Leather Apron

POV Unit Type: corpuscler

I MUST HAVE BEEN MORE TIRED THAN I REALIZED. I must have fallen asleep waiting for the Boss. I cursed myself for the mistake.

When I woke up from my slumber, I was no longer alone in the office. I could hear the sounds of someone coming from the work area. Even though I hadn’t made a noise, the Boss has a keen sense of detection, somehow he knew I was awake.

“You looked like you needed the rest,” called the Boss from the work area.

This was in response to the question I hadn’t yet asked. Why didn’t you wake me?

The Boss knows me too well. And if the Boss thinks I needed the rest, then I needed the rest.

Instead of answering him I sling my bitch tits over my shoulder. There are perks to being his corpuscler, and I do like my indulgences. Uninvited I step into the Boss’ work area.

His professional space looks like what you’d expect a traumist’s work area to look like. Tables mostly filled with the odd medical gear and the entire space is piled with medical bits and pieces of recycled humans stored in vessels of preservative. I’ve brought him more than my fair share of the recycled parts.

The Boss himself is a tall thin man who can’t seem to make up his mind what he looks like. He never looks the same way twice.

Some days he has long black hair, a smart black beard and is wearing a black top hat and a long medical coat. Today he’s wearing a white surgical gown. A shock of dirty blonde hair cropped close, a long pointy nose on a long pointy face, it looks like the Boss was stretched as a child it does. Today he wears no beard.

As always his long, supple bony fingers—the hands of an artist—are protected by spotless white surgical gloves.

Always spotless. The Boss is quite particular on that point.

The Boss is a man of many terrors and phobias. The traumist’s affliction I call it—often working in close contact with germs and disease has made him into a hypochondriac.

The Boss is habitually washing his hands.

Constantly checking himself for signs of dysentery, salmonella poisoning, diarrhea, foot rot, bedsores, sleep apnea, fungal disease, irregular heartbeat, irregular breathing, indigestion, bacterial infection, fevers and plagues, cancers, cankers, cavities and the occasional odd ‘ague in the small of his back.

The Boss is quite thorough in his idiosyncrasies.

We do not exchange pleasantries, right down to business.

I ask “Have we sent the second sync yet?”

“Not yet,” the Boss replies, “I believe there is still some time before the next sync.”

I breathe an immediate and audible sigh of relief.

“Ahh, Leather Apron, what have you brought us today?” The Boss looks at me, his eyes eager and expectant. His fingers in their spotless white gloves pressed together like the steeple of a church beneath his beardless chin.

The Boss knows me too well. He knows I wouldn’t have bothered to lug my bitch tits with me if I didn’t have something for him.

Something for him, personally.

This is going to be good.

I unsling the bitch-tits and begin to unpack the treasures I smuggled back from Tranquility’s End. A few choice bits I didn’t relinquish to General Medical Supplies when I came through quarantine.

Blood, bone, hair, internal organs. As always he is both pleased and delighted with my work.

However, in a tip of the hat to my inner showman, I have saved the best for last.

Vacuum sealed, floating in a solution of preservative and disinfectant I pull the recycling-pouch that holds Six-by’s leg out of the barrel. It is cool to the touch.

The Boss’ eyes light up. This is an unexpected treat.

“He’s the one.” I says.

“Are you sure of it?” asks the Boss.

His question is neither rhetorical nor directed at me. We have searched for this person for nearly twenty years. We both know I am sure of it and we both know what the one refers to.

I handed him the kid’s leg in response.

He eagerly accepted the leg and nodded. “I’ll test this at once.”

We both know there is no need for that, but there is no harm in making sure.

“Where is the rest of him?” asks the Boss.

I respond with “We have a bit of a problem there, sir. He’s on Debron IV.”

I have to give The Boss credit, he looks up from his inspection of the leg, and then asks with a straight face “Was he in any condition to protect himself?”

“Absolutely not, sir.” I reply without hesitation. “He was at death’s door. Traumatized, shell shocked, missing a limb. He’d hemorrhaged so much blood I’m surprised he was conscious. I wasn’t there to see it but I’m fairly certain he’d caught on fire at some point during the fighting on Tranquility.”

The Boss doesn’t say a word. Just looks at me.

“It was touch and go for a bit. Mostly go.”

I shrug my shoulders. No use holding anything back.

“I gave him a dab of the business for that knee. Then pushed him back into the fight.”

The Boss arched an eyebrow. Not exactly a reprimand but certainly not approving what I had done either.

“Maybe more than a dab, sir.” I reply.

Finally, ”You probably saved his life,” the Boss says.

“Well, no one’s perfect,” is my response. Dodged a bullet there.

The Boss knows me too well.

I didn’t dodge a damn thing. It was an in-field decision, I’d gone with my gut and I’ll stand by my choice. But that didn’t mean it was the right one.

I might as well get this part over with.

“There was a complication. He wiped some of the business on a kid. I didn’t recognize him and I wasn’t able to find him after the sync.”

No getting around it this time. That was going to get a reprimand.

We can’t have a kid infected with a bit of the business on his face running around The Good Shepherd. He wouldn’t be able to kill us all, but he’d damn well try.

To my surprise Whitechapel waved my mistake off. “I’ll take care of that,” he said. Then he indicated the leg, “What is the name of the owner of this?”

“Six-by,” I respond.

The Boss peppers me with questions. “Does he have any idea how important he is? Does he know we are looking for him? Does he know anyone is looking for him? Does he know how much danger he is in?”

“No sir. I don’t think he does.,” I said, neatly answering all of his question. “I don’t believe he has any idea what is going on. All I told him was you would try and jump the build order. That there would be a traumist and he should be there to meet it.”

And that is the crux of our problem. In the standard build order, a corpuscler will be sent on the second sync. He alone will provide for the medical attention of the men on the battlefield until the fourth of possibly fifth sync when he will be joined by his traumist and their blood wagon.

If I am not the corpuscler sent in the second sync, then Whitechapel will not be the traumist sent in the later sync. And if the Boss is not the traumist who repairs Six-by’s leg…

We have a serious problem.

If a competent medical professional (i.e., every traumist in the force) reattaches the leg he will surely discover what happened to Six-by when he was a boy…

It would lead to questions, and that inquiry would yield to a witch hunt. Perhaps even a civil war. It would tear us apart. There would be no getting over that.

His secret must be kept a secret, even from himself.

For now.

So it is imperative that I am the corpuscler sent in the next sync. So that Whitechapel can be the one who re-attaches the leg and his secret remains safely kept with us.

However, I just finished a grueling tour on Tranquility’s End, surely the war planning algorithms are aware of this and have computed a massive fatigue adjustment to my base efficiency and morale scores and thus assigned me a lower overall ranking in terms of suitability for deployment.

The negative adjustments are temporary and will presumably decay over the coming days/weeks as my assigned duties aboard The Good Shepherd will presumably be less hazardous than battlefield missions. But until then, it is inconceivable that the war planning algorithms will assign me to a battlefield, and certainly not in the next sync, choosing instead to send someone who wasn’t on Tranquility and thus has a higher ranking for a successful deployment.

This is an oversimplification of the problem and the variables taken into account by the war planner’s algorithms but this reflects the true state of affairs accurately enough.

The Boss, it goes without saying, has an excellent grasp of the situation.

“Prepare yourself for the sync,” he says. “I’ll handle the details of getting you assigned to it.”

I’ve never made a habit of questioning the Boss’ decisions but if he can get me on that transport…

He’s a miracle-worker.